


Expressions of Courage

by ToukoTai



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, community building on the Farm, through linguistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 07:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16739281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToukoTai/pseuds/ToukoTai
Summary: After the Fall of the City, the Farm takes in all comers. Guardian, civilian, refugee, militia or otherwise. And there's one phrase that ties them all together.





	Expressions of Courage

_**Expression** _

_Something that manifests, embodies, or symbolizes something else._

 

It starts with Marcus.

Or really it starts with the civilian medic who sets his leg.

Marcus was better off then most Guardians during the fall of the city. Largely thanks to Enoch, who’d rescued him from death by strangulation at the literal hands of the Cabal. But his leg was still broken. Didi, without enough Light left to heal more then a few papercuts couldn’t do anything to get him back on his feet. Which leaves his injuries to the mercies of modern, backwoods, medicine.

At least the Farm has medical supplies, and people trained to use them. Marcus waits until dusk before a medic can see him. There are others far more injured then him, he doesn’t envy them one bit. The groans and moans of the injured(and dying) echo in the twilight. The medic is older and _tired_. There are dark circles under her eyes and her mouth is drawn in a tight line, creases in her forehead and around her eyes stand out starkly in the bare bulb light of the infirmary area.

This has not been an easy time for _anyone_.

Still, she surveys his injury with a practiced eye.

“I’ll need to set this.” She says, resting a hand gently on his knee. “It won’t be pleasant.”

“Fire away.” He hates how his voice shakes a little. But everything that happened, that’s _still_ happening is crashing down in his head. The friends he’s lost, the workshop and his prized sparrows that are so much rubble, _Didi_. The medic pauses in her setup, looks him square in the eye.

“You are not done yet.” Her voice is calm and steady, like her hands as they rest on his leg, getting ready to fix him as best she can. “Be brave.” The conviction in her voice takes his breath away, so that he can only grunt in anguish, then bite his tongue, when the medic firmly sets his leg as quickly and efficiently as possible.

 

It sticks with him. What she said. It made him feel...something. He can’t define it really.

He’s a Guardian, he remains a Guardian. But he can _die_ now, for real, for good. His friends can die now too. It’s a terrible, dark thought. Sure Guardians had died a final death before, many had. But it wasn’t something that came so easily.

_Be Brave_

It was easy to be brave when you couldn’t really die. It was harder now, not that Marcus would admit it out loud. But he _was_ still a Guardian. And Guardians were _brave_. Didi might not be able to resurrect him, but he could still _be brave_.

 

Marcus passes it on to Enoch.

His friend is uneasy, though he doesn’t show it. Marcus knows him better then he can hide. It’s Enoch’s first patrol since the fall of the city and coming to the farm. Marcus can tell that he’s wrestling with the same issues that Marcus is, was.

So Marcus does for Enoch, what was done for him.

“Hey buddy, Bast.” It takes him a few tries to get his friend’s attention. When his friend turns his helmeted head to look down a little at Marcus. Marcus reached up, gripped the back of his head and pulled Enoch down to bump their foreheads together gently through the helmet.

“Be brave. For me.” Because Marcus can’t come with, can’t watch his back, his leg is still broken. He can only hope that Enoch will come back alive and in one piece. Enoch nods against his forehead, but he’s breathing easier and the line of his shoulders isn’t as tense.

He returns triumphant from patrol six hours later. Successfully repelling a fallen scouting troop.

Marcus breathes a sigh of relief.

 

Enoch is out with a patrol group again, only a few days later. Two hunters, two titans and a warlock. This time they are not as lucky. A roving pike gang finds them. Normally, this would be easy. It isn’t anymore. One wrong move could be the end, and they are all _aware_ of it.

“Be brave.” Enoch says to his patrol group, just as they are about to mount their counter attack. Heads nod, weapons are gripped tighter and the atmosphere changes from desperate to somber to _ready_.

They come back with only minimal injuries and their heads held high.

They are still _Guardians_.

From there it spreads. Guardian to militia to Guardian to civilian to Guardian again.

By the time Zavala arrives from Titan, it’s part of the common lexicon of the Farm.

_Be brave._

 

Zavala first hears it, from a hunter to a warlock. One leaving for patrol, the other at the guard post.

“Be brave!” The hunter calls over his shoulder as he vanishes into the surrounding forest. The warlock raises her hand in acknowledgment. It is a mundane interaction and as Zavala finds out, a common one for those leaving and those staying behind.

He hears it again, at the medical tent.

Zavala makes an effort to visit the medical set up as part of his rounds, at least once a day. To remind himself of the cost of their new reality, of his duty to those under his protection and to speak with the injured guardians and militia members.

“Be brave.” A titan tells a friend, letting her grip his hand as hard as she needs to as a medic sews the long gash in the friend’s leg closed. The friend is not a Guardian, isn’t used to fighting or dying or _this_ , but she nods her head, and pinches her lips closed and lets the medic work with little squirming.

Zavala files it away as something to ask about later.

The third time it’s Hawthorne, and she says it to _him_.

 

Late nights, planning, hoping, pinning everything he has on the _one_ Guardian who still has their Light, doesn’t sit well with Zavala. But all he can do right now is wait until his fireteam comes back. So he pours over maps and tactics and information. Determined that the Farm will be the most well protected place in the _galaxy_ for when(not if) his team returns. Hawthorne’s hand slams down on the map in front of Zavala.

“Think you need to rest up, big guy.” She says casually.

“I cannot just rest while there is work to be done.” His protesting falls on deaf ears as Hawthorne rolls the map up.

“Ain’t nothing you can do until your team gets back that the rest of us can’t handle. Won’t be any help to anyone if you’re asleep on your feet when they get here.” She must see something in his face, because she pats him gingerly on the shoulder. “One way or another this will end soon. Be brave.”

“Why do you say that phrase? Be brave?” He asked, genuinely curious. “I’ve heard it three times now since coming here.” Hawthorne shrugged, a lift of one shoulder.

“It’s just what we say.” Hawthorne sounded like she was both confused and laughing at him. “It’s a good thing. Promise.”

“But what do you mean by it?” Zavala pushed. Hawthorne outright laughed at that.

“Why don’t you find out?” She challenged and wouldn’t say anything more on the subject.

So Zavala sets himself to observing. To understanding the community he has joined.

 

A titan says it gently as he applies a band-aide to one of the children in his care, getting down on a knee to smooth the edges of the bandage on the child’s arm. The child sniffles and nods. An orphan from the fall of the city, who’d been playing with the other children and fallen, a sharp rock opening a small bloody scratch on her arm. She runs off to rejoin the group of children soon after under the titan’s watchful eye.

 

One of the militia members grips a new arrivals’ forearm and says it, before sweeping them into a hug. Someone they had thought lost in the fall of the city.

 

Shaxx’s booming voice carries it through the entire farm on an almost daily basis. (But then Shaxx is always saying things that like.)

 

Over the coms Devrim Kay directs a group of refugees to safety. “You’re almost there.” He picks off members of a pursuing squad of Cabal with ruthless efficiency. “Be brave.”

 

Before handing her infant into the somewhat unsure hands of the titan on child-minding duty, the mother says it with a half twist smile on her face, wanting to laugh but not wanting to offend. Then helps the titan position his hands correctly, and mimes how to rock the baby when she gets fussy. Zavala sees the same titan several days later, with a blanket thrown over his shoulder, easily taking care of the baby, while her mother is attending to one of her assigned camp duties.

 

When a warlock hands a helmet of one of the city militia back to a grieving widow, she says it to her. The widow chokes a thank you out, heavy with tears and loss, hands shaking almost too hard to hold the helmet. The warlock walks her back to her family’s tent, sees her safely inside with her remaining family.

 

A father says it to his two children as he heads off on a supply mission, ruffling his son’s hair and placing a kiss on his daughter’s forehead before he goes.

 

It’s passed between a titan and hunter, jokingly, as the hunter goes to tell Amanda she’s wrecked the latest salvage sparrow.

 

A pack of city militia and Guardians say it to each other on their way out of the compound, seperating to go in different directions as smaller squads. Equally made up of militia and Guardians.

 

“I will be brave.” A Hunter says with conviction as she dons the cloak of a fallen comrade.

 

It’s painted in neat white lettering on the makeshift hanger wall of the barn. Again in different handwriting and in black on the outside wall of the Tyra's lean-to. The last and first thing you would see when coming in from the landing field.

 

Hawthorne says it to the group that she sends out after Thumos. To every scout that she gives a mission to. To every person that she asks, or orders, into leaving the confines of the Farm to risk themselves in the wild. It is said to her in turn when she leaves the Farm on her own missions.

 

It’s called laughing, or firmly. Said somberly or gently. A thousand different ways in a thousand different contexts. But the meaning, the _intent_ behind the words is the same.

He thinks he’s starting to get it. It means more then what the words convey. A blessing, a prayer, a wish. A shield against the dark. A guiding star in the sky. A short expression that bundled everything together that no one could quite put into words otherwise.

Hold your head high.

Stand strong.

Stand tall.

 _Eyes up_ **_Guardian_**.

 

“Be brave.” A militia member says to Hawthorne as they do a final weapons check before starting the mission to save the city. Ikora gives him a strange look and Cayde coughs into his fist. Zavala realizes suddenly, from an outsider’s perception it sounds like a strange thing to say to someone who was just a few minutes ago going word to word with him, the Commander, about being in this mission to start with.

Hawthorne, who knows what the militia member is _really_ saying, who’s said that and heard it many times before, finds Zavala’s glowing eyes in the dark and grins at him, slinging her rifle over her shoulder in a casual easy movement. Seeing in him that his perception had changed.

“ _Now_ you’re getting it.” She said teeth bared in a predator’s smile.

Yes, Zavala thinks, he rather does.

When the end phase has come, and everything hangs on the actions of one Guardian. Zavala doesn’t even think when he opens the com line, doesn’t second guess what might be his last  words to this Guardian. Unknowingly, he echoes Marcus, back when he passed the phrase onto Enoch.

  
“Be brave.” Zavala says. “For _all_ of us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I got destiny 2 free, and I liked it so much I bought all the expansions.


End file.
